Talk:Ichijou Masaki/@comment-203.219.88.210-20150319131217/@comment-174.59.217.195-20150320030454
He's definitely affected by it but moreso afterwards, like the poster above said, he's willing to do what it takes on the battlefield if it means everyone else will be safe. However, afterwards, he seems to feel a bit sad and worried that he may have traumatized people and how he is viewed, the whole magicians as monsters and killing machines theme. In Yokohama he did allow people to surrender and be taken as prisoners if they came out and put their weapons down, so he's not bloodthirsty or uncaring even with the enemy, which is basic standard war ethics even today. However, with his classmates by the bus, they were fired on by soldiers with anti-magician guns, he had to use Rupture because it's a super fast kill and sends a demoralizing message to the enemy. I don't think he regrets his actions, but he does not want to make other people scared either. Scared is still better than dead. You can see a lot more of his internal conflict about his magic in Volume 15, he really feels bad about hurting the ancient magicians and is incredibly pissed because they were being manipulated with Zhou's MI magic (via spider bites). He controls Rupture to only blow up legs or blood vessels instead of the entire individual but it's a different circumstance from Yokohama where you had the foreign enemy on domestic soil using heavy artillery ready to slaughter en masse. It wasn't to that degree in Kyoto, you had a handful of ancient magicians, some elderly, who were acting against their own will so naturally he would feel worse about hurting them and try to limit damage. Then when he was with Mayumi he felt self-conscious about using too much violence in front of a lady and tried to use a bunch of different attacks before having to use Rupture (seems to work on just about anything as long as alive even breaking mind control). And Mayumi ended up throwing up and he felt bad. To Mayumi's credit, she did try to hold it in, she wasn't trying to show her emotions but it was too much. Then the four of them were chewed out by the police officer, with the officer threatening to arrest Masaki and Tatsuya for over-defense. He was very apologetic to the cop (who especially hated the 10 MC) but was sincere enough the cop let him go. Mayumi tried to share the blame too saying he went overboard because he was protecting her also and the cop seemed to at least sympathize with that. I think the issue was that Masaki was limiting himself and it was still too much force, that was him not going overboard. He has a hard time not being destructive and even him limiting his power, it's still a lot more than the average magician. I think he's maybe someone afraid of his own power but that's just maybe how I interpreted things. I would be curious to see him really go all out at some point, perhaps in Sado he did to earn the reputation. For the 10 MC, him having destructive power is wonderful and something of praise because it flaunts their power. To other magicians and non-magicians, it perhaps looks monstrous, intimidating and someone you want to avoid. George is okay with him and is a real friend but I'm not sure how people outside the 10 MC spectrum view him. At the same time, he doesn't want Miyuki to think he's a loser and incompetent for losing.